Fighting on all Fronts (48 page)

66
    J Silverstein, ed,
The Political Legacy of Aung San
(Ithaca, Cornell University, 1993), pp148, 153.

67
    Guyot, 1967. Taylor, 1980, deals well with this and some other legends of the nationalist period that have led some historians to be soft on the Japanese.

68
    The best biography of many is probably A Naw,
Aung San and the Struggle for Burma’s Freedom
(Seattle, University of Washington, 2001). The judgment of official Burma may be found in Maung Maung, 1962. Most of his important speeches, letters and public statements in English are found in Silverstein, 1993.

69
    P Fay,
The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942-1945
(Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1995).

Donny Gluckstein

China’s Second World War lasted from 1937 to 1945 in the form of the Sino-Japanese conflict. Millions perished on the battlefield and on the home front, many succumbing to war-related famine and disease. The themes developed in this book regarding the character of the global conflict applied with full force to China. But here, unlike in other countries, they were superimposed upon a pre-existing social revolution.

From the 1839 Opium War onwards this economically backward territory suffered encroachment by states enjoying the military advantages conferred by industrialisation. In the 19th century its vast size and location at the intersection of many different spheres of influence meant no single foreign power could claim sovereignty and so formal colonisation was limited. However, China was subject to “unequal treaties” with Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Portugal, Russia and the USA granting rights to exploit China’s people and resources. Thus the country became a field for inter-imperialist rivalry.

The Chinese government’s authority was undermined, although the piecemeal character of the damage meant it did not collapse immediately. Nonetheless, long-established internal social structures were disrupted and new forces unleashed. In 1911 what little remained of Chinese imperial authority was overthrown. But the movement that toppled the last dynasty was too weak to break free of imperialism or even to hold the country together. Regional warlords quickly filled the institutional vacuum. Thereafter China was also a field for internal rivalry between those seeking to claim authority within the country.

There was only one way to overcome these twin problems. For the revolution to succeed and for China to regain independence, to defeat warlordism and to progress, the masses had to throw their weight behind the process. The Kuomintang Party (KMT) founded by Sun Yat-sen claimed it could achieve this objective. But rallying the population was by no means straightforward. Sun Yat-sen’s brief presidency ended when he was driven out of power, despite the KMT’s success in
elections. The KMT then retreated to the south where it was tolerated by local warlords.

The peasantry made up the vast majority of the Chinese population. As one writer puts it, most “never moved outside their immediate home patch, and there was no education or media to spread the idea of national government.” Any party purporting to represent the entire population confronted a fundamental social and economic reality—the landlord class owned three quarters of the land and took at least half of peasant income as rent, leaving two thirds of the population living below subsistence level.
¹

The KMT was dominated by privileged groups and, as Isaacs points out, “the gulf which separated them from the great mass of the people was far wider and less bridgeable than the antagonism between them and the foreigners. From the foreigners they could and would try to exact concessions, to demand and secure a larger share of the spoils. But they could not hope to satisfy the masses of the people without undermining themselves… This fundamental and inescapable fact predetermined the limits to which the propertied classes of China would go”.
²

These contradictions would later cripple the KMT’s resistance to Japan during the Second World War, but they were evident much earlier. The KMT initially turned to Soviet Russia, then a symbol of anti-imperialism, as a counterweight to the colonialists.
³
It followed logically that the KMT and the newly formed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should cooperate locally.

Sun Yat-sen died in 1925 and was replaced by the KMT’s military leader, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Bolstered by Russian advisers and assistance, he announced a Northern Expedition to “overthrow all warlords and wipe out reactionary power…and complete the National Revolution”.
⁴
This would be the largest military campaign to occur between the two world wars. In 1927, as the Nationalist Army approached Shanghai, a city largely controlled by foreign “Concessions” and home to half of China’s industrial workforce,
⁵
massive strikes erupted around the slogans “Support the Northern Expeditionary Army” and “Hail Chiang Kai-shek”.
⁶

The authorities responded by beheading strike leaders and parading their heads on bamboo poles. The stoppages then escalated to embrace over half a million people. When, after some deliberate delay, Chiang’s army arrived he did not thank his supporters. Instead:

machine gunners…opened fire without warning. Lead spouted into the thick crowd from both sides of the street. Men, women, and children
dropped screaming into the mud. The crowd broke into a mad flight. The soldiers kept firing into the backs of the fleeing demonstrators.
⁷

The KMT had made its choice. Overcoming warlords and imperialists was secondary to exploiting and controlling the masses. With very little to offer the population, Chiang’s government became elitist and dictatorial. Between January and August 1928 at least 28,000 people were executed.
⁸
During the Second World War Chiang claimed to support Sun Yat-sen’s three principles: national independence, democracy and rising living standards for the masses. But the last two had to wait: “When victory comes at the end of this war, we shall have fully achieved national independence, but will yet have far to go to attain our other two objectives.” In the meantime the population must “restrict consumption and intensify production”.
⁹

The chief obstacle to the native ruling class and its dictatorial ambitions was the organised working class and its most important political party—the CCP. Chiang launched successive “extermination drives” against it. Driven from the cities, the CCP established rural “red bases”, but he smashed these too. In 1934-1935 the CCP was compelled to undertake the perilous 7,000-mile “Long March” to Yenan in the remote north west. Despite this retreat, the KMT focus on the CCP did not diminish when Japan began its conquest of China.

Japan established an important foothold in Manchuria (a region north east of the Great Wall) in 1931 and launched a major expansion southwards after 1937. Chiang did not collaborate, unlike Wang Jingwei, his rival for KMT leadership and founder of a puppet state in 1940. But he was thoroughly equivocal about inspiring resistance either by speech or action, declaring: “Japan is not qualified to be our enemy; our present enemy is the red bandits” who represented a “disease of the vital organs”.
¹⁰
Chiang had a clear order of priority: “first internal pacification, then external resistance”.
¹¹
So rather than fight the 1931 incursion into Manchuria, Chiang appealed to the League of Nations, which was impotent.

Such passivity was rejected by the volunteer armies that sprang up to resist but the KMT refused them all assistance.
¹²
When a local KMT commander fought Japan’s attack on Shanghai in 1932, Chiang put on a belated show of opposition but quickly sought a truce. Demands for resistance from a “National Salvation Movement” were ignored
¹³
and by 1935 Chiang was offering a “fundamental readjustment” of Sino-Japanese relations through direct talks with Tokyo.
¹⁴
During the “Xi’an Incident” in December 1936 he was kidnapped by the former warlord of Manchuria.
Chiang was only released after agreeing to a second united front with the Communists to resist Japan.

Chiang’s commitment to this should have been reinforced when fighting at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing in July 1937 unleashed a full-scale Japanese offensive. But Chiang soon reverted to type, adopting a policy of “trading space for time”.
¹⁵
While claiming all the while to be fighting for the nation his forces would consistently “fall back into the interior”. As a consequence the Nationalist capital was moved successively further south west—from Nanjing to Wuhan and finally Chongqing.
¹⁶

Any lingering doubts about the KMT’s attitude to joint action were dispelled in 1941. According to the terms of the united front, the Red Army was integrated into Nationalist forces under the titles of Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army. In January of that year the latter, comprising some 9,000 troops, was attacked by 80,000 of Chiang’s soldiers.

While suppressing the CCP Chiang planned to avoid any single imperialist power dominating China by exploiting their rivalries. In the early 1920s Russia was the favoured partner, until domestic working class discontent made that alliance inconvenient. After Hitler’s accession to power in 1933 Germany became “the KMT’s major supplier of military hardware and expertise”.
¹⁷
When Hitler adopted Japan as his key Asian ally Chiang turned once again to Russia. Diplomatic relations, broken off in 1927, were now restored. Ironically, this led to Russian munitions being used against CCP positions.
¹⁸

New avenues for Chiang to enlist foreign support appeared after Japan struck Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The US had merrily armed both China and Japan in the 1930s.
¹⁹
But now, like the Russians, President Roosevelt hoped to use China to absorb Japanese aggression, leaving the US free to concentrate on Europe.
²⁰
Chiang happily received supplies and indeed regularly complained that these were insufficient. But observers eventually realised that his “principal aim was to acquire [US] military equipment and weapons for a post-war conflict with the Chinese Communists”.
²¹

This suspicion was confirmed by Chiang’s day-to-day policies. Whenever Stilwell, the US general assigned to the Nationalists, urged the army towards vigorous action against the Japanese he was blocked. A frustrated President Roosevelt wrote to Chiang: “I have urged time and again in recent months that you take drastic action to resist the disaster which has been moving closer to China and to you.” He demanded “immediate action” including granting Stilwell “unrestricted command of all your forces”.
²²
But Chiang was immovable and on his insistence Stilwell was recalled.
²³

In late 1944, when the Japanese were making major advances during Operation Ichigo, Stilwell’s replacement told Chiang: “It is considered essential that all available Chinese troops be organised immediately”.
²⁴
This would have meant utilising Chinese Communist troops alongside Nationalist ones; the idea was rejected outright. Washington even considered assassinating Chiang more than once but held back as there was no obvious replacement.

Since the army’s role was to suppress the Chinese population rather than combat foreign aggressors, it had to be run on strictly authoritarian lines as an obedient tool of the authorities. Officers embezzled soldiers’ pay and, as Chiang admitted, indulged in gambling, smuggling and opium trading. Disease, starvation and desertion destroyed entire units and when someone died:

his death is not reported, he continues to be a source of income, increased by the fact that he has ceased to consume. His rice and his pay become a long lasting token of memory in the pocket of his commanding officer.
²⁵

While the rich avoided the draft, conscripted soldiers were tied together and force-marched hundreds of miles, many dying in the process. As one US commander wrote, military service “comes to the Chinese peasant like famine and flood, only more regularly”.
²⁶

Even if the will to resist Japan had been strong, not without reason did Chiang conclude that although 3 million Nationalist troops confronted 680,000 Japanese “if we merely compare the military strength of China and Japan, we are certainly inferior”.
²⁷
This judgement conveniently provided an alibi for inaction and a pretext for demanding Allied aid against the Axis. The only alternative would have been to turn to the masses, as US journalist Edgar Snow observed at the time:

It was clear that the Chinese command could not hope to outmatch Japan in any supreme struggle of arms for vital points and lines. Somewhere it had to find a strategic asset to reinforce the main effort of the regular troops. This asset could only lie…among the millions of people…
²⁸

But after repressing its own people the Nationalist Army could not engender enthusiasm. To ordinary citizens it appeared as a parasitic body feeding off them. This was literally the case. A US journalist described attending sumptuous banquets provided by Nationalist generals:

while peasants were scraping the fields…for tops and wild grass to stuff into their griping stomachs. But I was more than ashamed—I was overcome with
a feeling of loathing when I learned that these same generals and the KMT officials were buying up land from starving farmers for arrears in taxes…
²⁹

Summing up the situation in Nationalist China during 1943, Fenby writes: “Corruption and speculation soared… Across the Nationalist areas, a quarter of the inhabitants were estimated to be refugees or homeless. Drought hit the South, killing more than a million people; yet troops sold food to the Japanese as starving people perished around them”.
³⁰